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Vital Records Substitutes

November 14, 2025

As I discussed last week, birth and death certificates are among the most valuable genealogical records. However, these records are not available for many of our ancestors. If birth and death certificates don’t exist or are sealed, what can a genealogist use to fill in the blanks? Fortunately, substitutes for birth and death certificates exist.

 

Church records are some of the best vital records substitutes. Like birth and death certificates, baptismal and death records were made at the time of an event which usually makes them more accurate. In addition, most of our ancestors were church members. Many church records have been digitized and can be found on websites such as Ancestry and Family Search. For example, Ancestry has digitized copies of original Quaker records.

 

It’s important to remember that churches often recorded the date of a person’s baptism or burial, not the birth date or death date. For obvious reasons, burial dates and death dates were not very far apart. However, baptismal dates varied depending on whether the church practiced infant baptism or baptism later in life. A baptismal or funeral date is usually not the actual birth or death date.

 

Obituaries and cemetery records can also provide birth and death information. These records are typically more accurate for death dates than birth dates. That’s because the person giving the information is often a child or grandchild. They were obviously not alive when the person being buried was born. Obituaries were published around the time of the death – not two years earlier or later. The exact date of death may be off by a few days, however.

 

Wills and probate packages don’t usually list birth dates, but they do often list death dates. Even if they don’t give the exact date of death, the date that the probate was filed in court can be helpful in narrowing the date of death to a specific time frame.

 

Censuses are often used as vital record substitutes, but they should be used with care. Censuses are notoriously error prone. The census taker may have miswritten the information he was given. A person may have lied about his/her age. The census taker sometimes interviewed neighbors about a family if the family was not at home. Neighbors may or may not have known how old someone was.

 

Censuses can be used to get a general sense of when someone was born. This works best if the data from multiple censuses for the same person is compared. If the ages listed are consistent, the information is more likely to be accurate.

 

Military records such as pension files and draft registration cards can also be useful in providing vital record information.

 

Many of us assume that the only way to find an accurate birth or death date for an ancestor is through birth and death certificates. While these records are important, there are many other records that can provide this information. Don’t overlook them.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society

Difficulties Accessing Birth and Death Certificates

November 7, 2025

Birth and death certificates are important genealogical records. Most genealogists strive to find them for everyone in their family tree and use them to solve genealogical puzzles.

 

However, there are some difficulties with birth and death certificates. In many parts of the United States neither record type was kept until the 20th century. Some more populated places did keep birth and death records earlier. For example, New Jersey kept birth and death records starting in 1848. The best way to find out what vital records a state kept is the Family Search Research Wiki (https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Main_Page ). The Wiki will include information such as when a state began vital records registration. It also includes links to any online records available.

 

However, many birth and death records are not available online. The Wiki will tell you that Minnesota began keeping birth and death records at the county level in 1870. Unfortunately, only some of the county records have been digitized.

 

When I was researching my own family in Meeker County, Minnesota, I learned that none of their vital records were digitized. The only way to gain access to the records was to visit the county courthouse and page through the original ledger books. Making copies of the records was also restricted, so my sister and I transcribed the records for our family. It was not ideal since it meant that the chance of introducing errors was increased, but it was better than nothing.

 

Privacy concerns have led to another problem with accessing birth and death records. Most states do not consider birth and death certificates to be public. They require a person requesting the records to prove a close relationship. This usually means spouse, child or grandchild. Colorado is one such state.

 

In many states older records are often accessible to the public. However, some states, such as Utah, have imposed a 50-year waiting period on death certificates and a 100-year waiting period on birth certificates. The restricted period varies from state to state.

 

Some states have digitized older certificates. These may be available online. Since they contain more genealogical information, death certificates are typically more frequently digitized than birth certificates. Some states such as Arizona, Utah and Missouri have online death certificates. These records are free – usually through the state library or archives.

 

Birth and Death certificates are important genealogical resources, but there are issues associated with accessing them. It’s important to check with resources such as the Family Search Wiki to find out what is available from the state you are researching. This is especially important if you are travelling to access the records.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Concepts: What is a Half-Relationship, Like Half First Cousins, Anyway?

Pretty much everyone knows what a half sibling is – someone who shares one, but not both parents with each other.

If you and your sibling share the same mother, but not the same father (or vice versa), you’re half-siblings. Only one parent is shared between half-siblings.

If you share both parents, you’re full siblings.

Step-Siblings

Step-siblings are often confused and used interchangably with half-siblings, but they aren’t at all the same. And yes, it matters.

If your parent married someone who already had a child, but both you and that child were born to prior (or future) marriages/relationships of your respective parent – you’re step siblings.

In other words, your parents are married to each other, and you may live in the same household, but you don’t share a genetic link with a step-sibling because you don’t share any parent in common.

By way of example, my mom married a man who had a son from a prior marriage, and his son is my stepbrother. The man my mother married is my stepfather.

My mother is my stepbrother’s stepmother.

The real message here, other than clarifying confusing relationship terms that are often used incorrectly, is that:

  • There is a biological relationship between full-siblings and half-siblings
  • There is no biological relationship between step-siblings, unless one exists due to ancestors someplace in the past

I wrote about how much of your ancestors’ DNA you can expect to inherit in the article, Ancestral DNA Percentages – How Much of Them is in You?.

Genetically, Half Versus Full Matters

The amount of autosomal DNA that is expected to be shared between full-siblings and half-siblings differs. Throughout this section, I’m using words like “expected” and “about” because in reality, after parents, “exactly” half of the ancestral DNA in a specific generation does not get passed to the next generation. Random recombination is a factor and therefore, the expected inherited percentages are approximate.

Full siblings share both parents, while half-siblings share only one parent, so full siblings share about 50% of their DNA, while half-siblings share about 25% of their DNA – and only from one parent.

Therefore, every descendant relationship from full or half relationships varies by 50% between the two types of relatoinships.

Half-siblings can be expected to share, on average, half as much autosomal DNA as full siblings – because they only share one parent – not two.

For example, first cousins (1C) share about 12.5% of their DNA, but half first cousins (half 1C) share about 6.25% of their DNA.

In other words, the “half” designation literally means that those two people share half a relationship – one parent (or grandparent, etc.), not both, in the founding generation, and their descendants continue to share half as much DNA as a full relationship in the same generation.

Subsequent Generations

Extending those relationships down the tree generation by generation, we see that in each subsequent generation, the descendants can be expected, on average, to share one-fourth as much DNA with each other as the preceding generation. That’s because two transmission events have taken place, one in Child 1’s line, and one in Child 2’s line.

The same as in full sibling lineages, each subsequent half-sibling descendant generation can also be expected to share one quarter as much autosomal DNA as the preceding one.

“Removed” Relationships

If you encounter a situation where one side of the descendant tree is “longer” than the other by a generation or more, then you’re dealing with a phenomenon known as “removed,” such as first-cousin-once-removed (1C1R), or, in the example above, a third cousin (3C) once removed (1R).

The same concepts still apply. A half 3C1R would share half as much DNA as a 3C1R.

I wrote all about “removed” relationships and their genetic genealogy effects in the article Concepts: What Does a Cousin “Once Removed” Mean.

Summary

In this final chart, I’ve combined the full-sibling and half-sibling charts into one so that you can compare them easily. I’ve also removed the “other” parent that the half-siblings don’t share to conserve space.

I wrote about how much DNA each type of relationship can be expectd to share, both centiMorgans (cMs) and percentages, including relationships not detailed here, such as half-uncles and half-aunts, in the article Shared cM Project 2020 Analysis, Comparison & Handy Reference Charts.

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